8 reportedly killed in U.S. raid inside Syria
Syrian news sources say the attack also wounded 14 people near the Iraqi border. U.S. military representatives do not deny the raid.
By Borzou Daragahi
1:20 PM PDT, October 26, 2008
REPORTING FROM BEIRUT -- U.S. aircraft crossed five miles into Syrian air space today and launched a commando raid that left at least eight people dead near the Iraqi border, Syrian news outlets and sources reported.

The reported attack also injured as many as 14 people, according to Syria's private Dunya television station.

Details were sketchy. In Washington, several military representatives asked about the operation did not deny that a raid had taken place. Although they would not confirm the attack, they used language typically employed after raids conducted by secretive Special Operations forces.

Damascus' official Syrian Arab News Agency said U.S. military helicopters entered Syria along the Iraqi border in Bukamal near the town of Deir Ezzor, which is considered a haven for Sunni Arab militants infiltrating Iraq.

Deir Ezzor, in eastern Syria, is also near the site of a Sept. 6, 2007, Israeli air strike on what U.S. officials have claimed was a plutonium plant built with the assistance of North Korea.

The Syrian news agency said four U.S. helicopters crossed into Syrian airspace around 4:45 p.m. local time and fired on a number of people who appeared to be laborers at their jobs on the second day of the Syrian workweek.

"All victims were civilians," the Dunya report said.

Witnesses told media that two helicopters landed and eight U.S. soldiers disembarked. Syrian state television said they stormed a building.

The attack, if confirmed, would appear to mark the first time during the 5-year-old Iraq war that U.S. troops have launched an attack inside Syria.

U.S. officials have often accused Syria of allowing Sunni Arab insurgents to cross the porous frontier into Iraq and wreak havoc. But such allegations have subsided in recent months as violence in Iraq has decreased and Damascus and Washington have begun taking steps toward rapprochement.

Syrian foreign minister Walid Moallem met briefly with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last month.

Daragahi is a Times staff writer.

daragahi@latimes.com

Staff writer Julian E. Barnes in Washington and special correspondent Ziad Haidar in London contributed to this report.

8 reportedly killed in U.S. raid inside Syria - Los Angeles Times

Update from CNN:
U.S. forces staged attack in Syria, U.S. official says

* Story Highlights
* Raid killed al Qaeda smuggler, U.S. official says
* Syrian, local officials give conflicting accounts of those killed
* AP journalist sees bodies of seven men at funerals Monday
* Four helicopters crossed Iraq border, two landed, witness tells AP

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. military conducted a "successful" strike into Syria on Sunday to kill a suspected al Qaeda facilitator, a U.S. official said Monday.
"We will not bow for America. No, No, No for America," reads a sign during a funeral in Syria on Monday.

"We will not bow for America. No, No, No for America," reads a sign during a funeral in Syria on Monday.
more photos »

The American official, who would not be identified but has access to U.S. intelligence, identified the intended target of the attack as "Abu Ghadiya," an Iraqi whose family he said has been active in smuggling money, weapons and foreign fighters across the Syrian border into Iraq.

The official, who asked to remain anonymous because of the classified nature of the operation, also confirmed that U.S. helicopters and military special operations forces carried out the attack.

Syrian officials lashed out at Washington on Monday for a "sheer violation of international law," saying the U.S. attack killed eight people and wounded one.

Syria's state news agency SANA said four U.S. helicopters crossed the border and struck a farm about 5 miles inside Syria before returning to Iraqi airspace. The raid occurred about 4:45 p.m. local time on Sunday, the agency said. Video Watch Syrian foreign minister accuse U.S. of aggression »

It said the helicopters hit a civilian building under construction on the farm, killing a father and his four sons, a married couple and another man.
Don't Miss

* Iraqi ministry members hurt in car bombing
* Bombing wounds Iraqi general
* Behind the Scenes: Who's talking at the Pentagon?

However, local officials said seven men were killed, according to an Associated Press report.

And an AP journalist at the scene in the village of Sukkariyeh on Monday reported seeing the bodies of seven men at funerals in the village.

Villager Jumaa Ahmad al-Hamad told The AP he saw four helicopters in the area on Sunday. Two landed, he said.

Ten minutes of shooting followed, al-Hamad told The AP, after which he walked to the scene and found the bodies of his uncle, Dawoud al-Hamad, and four of his uncle's sons.

Another witness told the AP he saw two men taken away by U.S. forces.

"The U.S. is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, so this is an outrageous crime for a country who is responsible for maintaining peace and security in the whole world to act this way," Jihad Makdissi, a spokesman for the Syrian Embassy in London, told the BBC.

The attack occurred near Al-Bukamal, a town home to a Red Crescent camp for Iraqi refugees. The town is across the border from the western Iraqi city of Qaim, a major route for Sunni Arab fighters battling U.S. troops in Iraq.

Syria has said it has made efforts to secure the 600-kilometer desert border, but Maj. Gen. John Kelly, the U.S. commander in western Iraq's Anbar province, told reporters last week that much of the border is "uncontrolled."

"We still have a certain level of foreign fighter movement, not much, through Anbar because of our activities out there," Kelly said. But he said Iraqi intelligence believes al Qaeda operatives and others "live pretty openly on the Syrian side, and periodically we know that they try to come across."

Syrian Embassy spokesman Makdissi said the United States cannot take matters into its own hands. Video Watch CNN's Cal Perry explain the implications of the attack »

"They should come to Syrian authorities and share their information instead of applying the law of the jungle," Makdissi told the BBC.
advertisement

After Sunday's attack, Damascus, Syria, demanded that Iraq's government "immediately investigate this serious violation," SANA reported. And the Syrian government summoned U.S. and Iraqi diplomats to the Foreign Ministry in Damascus to condemn the attack, according to a Syrian diplomat in Washington, who asked to remain anonymous.

The diplomat said Syrian officials insisted that Iraq must not be a staging ground for attacks on Syrian territory